Jake Knapp has withdrawn from the Arnold Palmer Invitational shortly before the start of his opening round at Bay Hill Club & Lodge on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The PGA Tour confirmed the late withdrawal at 11:50 a.m. ET, just 15 minutes before Knapp<\/a> was due to tee off at 12:05 p.m. His agent told Golfweek<\/a>\u2019s Adam Schupak that the American is battling illness and chose to step aside to focus on recovering ahead of next week\u2019s The Players Championship.<\/p>\n China\u2019s Haotong Li, who began Thursday as first alternate, was dded to the field in Knapp\u2019s place.<\/p>\n Show X Embedded Content<\/p>\n Loading this video will expose you to potential cookies and tracking by the provider<\/p>\n Knapp\u2019s absence is notable given the form he has shown early in the 2026 season.\u00a0<\/p>\n The American arrived at Bay Hill ranked eighth in the FedEx Cup standings after producing four consecutive top-10 finishes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n His most recent outing saw him claim solo sixth at the Genesis Invitational.<\/p>\n In fact, Knapp has yet to finish outside the top 11 this season, with his worst result a tie for 11th at the Sony Open in Hawaii.<\/p>\n The Arnold Palmer Invitational marks the third signature event of the 2026 PGA Tour season, featuring a reduced field and increased prize fund.\u00a0<\/p>\n The top 50 players and ties after two rounds will make the cut, along with anyone within 10 shots of the lead, ensuring they receive a share of the purse.<\/p>\n Subscribe to our Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jake Knapp has withdrawn from the Arnold Palmer Invitational shortly before the start of his opening round at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-509627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}